Page 5 - Black Range Naturalist, April 2020

Ready
So, taking as much of the above into consideration as possible...
A. After much agonized circle wiggling, we chose a center point near McClede Mountain. It is a prominent, permanent landmark on public land. Within 7.5 miles of it we encompass Hillsboro, Kingston, Berrenda, and a bit of Lake Valley Ranch as well as the Hillsboro Box, U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands, and access roads.
B. Although the majority of the initial volunteers were locals with warm houses for retreat if the weather turned nasty, out of town birders are always possible so we chose Friday, Dec 20 when the Hillsboro General Store Café, the Black Range Vineyards, the 152 Gallery, Black Range Lodge, and Black Range Museum were open. Several B&Bs in the Hillsboro area were available for anyone needing lodging. This date also avoided the closest count, Caballo, by a week.
C. Generally, teams should have someone that knows the ins and outs of the area where each will be counting, not get lost, and have an idea how long it should take to get somewhere. Each should have a good birder that can help with species identification, and very important, “bird dogs”.
These are sometimes the most important. They are the folks who say, “what is THAT!” and gets every one’s attention on a bird needing identification. Everyone does not have to be a master birder – we all are at different levels of skill and all started somewhere, so everyone is important and welcome.
D. Explain so all understand that we need to avoid double counting birds. They are only to count birds in their area. If they see birds in another team’s area, tell that team leader so they can decide if the species is one that team did not get and so should include in their list. For feeder counts, we take the high count for that species for the day. If you see 5 house finches at 10 AM and 3 at noon and 7 at 3 PM, we use the 7 as the max for that area, we do not add all the bunches together unless you are sure they are different birds ( male and female for instance). Another side bar is “count week” birds. For 3 days before and 3 days after the count day, if a species is noted in the circle that was not encountered count day, it can go in as a “count week bird”. The numbers are not recorded, but they add to the total species list in the circle. For example, a species turns up at a feeder that was missed count day, or an owl is heard 2 nights later that was not noted count day, those species are added in for the circle so the compiler needs to know if something different shows up.
The area encompassed by the Hillsboro CBC.*
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